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Investigators trying to figure out why a taxi driver plowed into a crowd outside a popular Gaslamp Quarter nightclub early Saturday are wading through varied, and sometimes conflicting, statements from nearly two dozen injured people and numerous witnesses, as well as security camera footage.

“We have to determine exactly what people saw, not what they heard or thought they saw,” said San Diego police traffic Lt. Rick O’Hanlon.

O’Hanlon said investigators are looking into whether the 48-year-old Emerald Cab driver may have fallen asleep as he drove slowly south on Sixth Avenue and veered across a sidewalk, striking pedestrians on the corner of Island Avenue in front of the Stingaree nightclub at 1:54 a.m.

Authorities initially reported 25 injured, six critically. But Saturday afternoon, O’Hanlon reduced the number to 23 injured and described six as being in serious but stable condition. A 42-year-old woman’s leg was amputated below the knee after she was pinned between the cab and a wall, said San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque.

O’Hanlon said he didn’t know how many were injured in the crash or in a fight that broke out afterward.

Some people suffered broken bones; others with scrapes and bruises were treated at the scene by paramedics.

Witnesses told officers the driver “seemed to be out of it” and just “drifted” off the street, police Lt. Todd Jarvis said.

O’Hanlon said investigators don’t believe the driver had been drinking or that he acted deliberately.

“We are treating this as an unfortunate accident,” O’Hanlon said. “We’re checking into the cabdriver’s background. We’re in the process of reviewing surveillance tapes and looking for any others.”

The cabdriver’s name was not made public. “We do not release the names of drivers involved in accidents,” O’Hanlon said.

Anywhere from 10 to 100 people became involved in a melee after the crash, with some reports that witnesses pounded on the cab and pulled the driver out when he tried to back the car away from the building.

O’Hanlon said the surveillance tapes come from outside the Stingaree and other businesses. He said it wouldn’t be unusual for 20 or more people to be standing on a Gaslamp street corner at bar-closing time.

The taxi driver suffered a broken nose either from the crash or the fight. He was treated at a hospital and released.

The taxi’s windshield was shattered by two obvious impacts on the right and left sides. The cab and the building sustained minor damage when the car hit the corner of the nightclub.

Stingaree owner James Brennan said the cabbie had a pair of scissors in his hand that he swung at one of the club managers, although he didn’t know what the driver intended to do with them.

Witness Ron Pizarro, 31, said he was inside the club about a foot from the door when he heard the sounds of people being hit by the car. He looked out the window and saw bodies flying.

“I saw the cab coming through the crowd and people bouncing off the car,” Pizarro said. He and his companions ran outside and were met with a chaotic scene. He said people were yelling and screaming and victims were lying everywhere.

One man was seen holding a badly injured woman and telling her over and over that she was going to make it, Pizarro said. “I thought she was going to die,” he said.

He and his friend pulled another woman out from under the car. He said that when he looked up, he saw that people were hitting the cab and the cabbie. There were no passengers in the taxi.

Jarvis said the driver was going about 15 mph at the time of the crash.

“If he had been going 25 miles per hour, it would have been a different story,” Jarvis said. “We were fortunate there were no fatalities in this incident with that many pedestrians on the sidewalk.”

An off-duty military paramedic who had been at the club said the scene was initially chaotic, with people screaming and yelling. He said he went to the aid of three of the injured who were in the street and assisted them until San Diego paramedics arrived minutes later. He declined to give his name.